Comparing their students’ average gains on standardized tests over the school year makes it easier to predict which teachers — all else equal — are more likely to improve their student’s long-term life outcomes.
Responses
© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
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Responses weighted by each expert's confidence
© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
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70%
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Participant |
University |
Vote |
Confidence |
Bio/Vote History |
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 Daron Acemoglu |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Value-added evaluation is far from perfect. But given that teachers matter greatly, it's surely one of many indicators one should look at.
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 Alberto Alesina |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Joseph Altonji |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Alan Auerbach |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 David Autor |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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It's imperfect and can be refined, but there's no question this approach contains useful predictive info.
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 Katherine Baicker |
University of Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Abhijit Banerjee |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Marianne Bertrand |
Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Markus Brunnermeier |
Princeton | Did Not Answer | Bio/Vote History | |
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 Raj Chetty |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
 Judith Chevalier |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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While in principle test scores are a useful input to teacher evaluation, the work of Rothstein and Darling summarizes important caveats
-see background information here |
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 David Cutler |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Angus Deaton |
Princeton | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Darrell Duffie |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Although teaching-to-the-test is bad practice, I anticipate a positive correlation between teaching quality and test-score improvement.
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 Aaron Edlin |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Barry Eichengreen |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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I'm firmly in the some-testing-is-helpful camp, but tests are likely to be a noisy signal for "long-term" life outcomes.
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 Liran Einav |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Ray Fair |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Amy Finkelstein |
MIT | Did Not Answer | Bio/Vote History | |
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 Pinelopi Goldberg |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Austan Goolsbee |
Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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yes but with lots of noise and unbservables
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 Michael Greenstone |
University of Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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impt caveat: you can "get what you pay for" - higher test scores but less fundamental learning. are there broader tests w/o this problem?
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 Robert Hall |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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An heavily fact-related issue in an area I'm not well informed about.
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 Oliver Hart |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Research by Chetty et al. suggests this is so and I take that seriously. But this is a complex issue and it is early to reach conclusions.
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 Bengt Holmström |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Caroline Hoxby |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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If I could answer a well-worded question re: modern value-added methods, I would say "strongly agree" but this question is too badly worded.
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 Hilary Hoynes |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Kenneth Judd |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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I suspect that most situations do not satisfy the "all else equal" condition.
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 Steven Kaplan |
Chicago Booth | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Anil Kashyap |
Chicago Booth | Bio/Vote History | ||
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I think that is what Chetty and others find, though "easier" is in the eye of the beholder
-see background information here |
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 Pete Klenow |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
 Jonathan Levin |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Eric Maskin |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Recent large-scale empirical work seems to back up this assertion.
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 William Nordhaus |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Emmanuel Saez |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Larry Samuelson |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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But testing is just one of many measures, and is a noisy measure, and can induce distortions in behavior.
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 José Scheinkman |
Columbia University | Bio/Vote History | ||
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See Chetty et al. American Economic Review 2014
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 Richard Schmalensee |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Plausible, but ...
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 Carl Shapiro |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Robert Shimer |
University of Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Likely more informative in some schools than others.
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 Richard Thaler |
Chicago Booth | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Imperfect but useful tool.
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 Christopher Udry |
Northwestern | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Score gains have some information. But the proper weight is unknown, and "all else equal" is very difficult to arrange.
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